


rapunzel, rapunzel

by shuofthewind



Series: The Making of Monsters [SIDEFICS] [5]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Darcy Never Met Jane, Crack, F/M, Fluff, I Don't Even Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 21:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6255628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy's bored. And curious. It's a bad combo. </p><p>[Or, Matt can't explain himself and there is a minor breach of office professionalism.]</p><p>[TPoW 'verse. Darcy POV. Shameless fluffy crack, because season two is going to kill us with sadfaces. I blame extasiswings again.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	rapunzel, rapunzel

“Can I ask you something?”

In the kitchen, Matt stops. His eyebrows lift. Darcy watches him do it from where she’s curled into the armchair, blanket tucked in around her shoulders, and thinks, _well, okay, then_. Usually that question doesn’t get an abrupt stop-and-stare. “That sounds ominous,” Matt says after a moment, hand on the counter. 

“Why is that ominous?”

“Because when you use that voice it means there are probably going to be odd consequences.”

“Har-de-har-har.” She draws her knees up against her chest. “You’ve asked me weirder ones, trust me.”

“Now I’m nervous.”

“Oh, chill, kitty,” she says, and Matt makes a face at her, scrunching his nose. 

“Why do you call me that?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” 

He doesn’t seem to have an answer to this. Matt turns and starts fussing with whatever vegetables he’s scrounging up out of the fridge. Darcy waits until he’s put the knife down, at least, before she says, “What is it with you and my hair?”

He doesn’t fumble anything. Actually, he very deliberately moves all of his chopped carrots over to the stewpot and keeps his back turned to her as he says, “What?”

“I mean, like. I don’t think I’m crazy when I say that I’m pretty sure you have like…a huge thing for my hair. And I don’t have a problem with it, let’s be real, but I don’t have a single clue where it’d come from, because like…so far as I remember, you generally left hair alone. At least, on the people I remember you dating.”

“I don’t seem to recall talking about stuff like that with you while I was dating them.”

“Yeah, but I’m not, you know, completely unobservant. You mess with my hair all the time, in front of everyone. You never did that with anyone else.”

He shifts pots around. “Do I?”

“You totally do.”

“I don’t remember.”

She’s not sure if she wants to spit or snort. “Bullshit.”

“Seriously, Darcy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

She watches his back for a minute or two, and then says, “Uh-huh.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Because you’re a shit liar.”

Matt snorts again. “Sure.”

“No, seriously, like, you’re pulling the whole _I am expressly not looking at you because you will see all the fibs on my face_ thing right now.”

He turns his face to her, very pointedly, and says again, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He really is a shit liar, she thinks. It shouldn’t be endearing, but it is. “Sure, buddy,” she says, and when he comes out of the kitchen and touches his fingers to her shoulder (not her head, but her shoulder, and she has a feeling that’s very deliberate) she turns her face up to kiss him. There’s something like chili on his mouth. “Tell yourself that.”

“Come help me with this,” he says. “Onions are difficult.”

“That was a very calculated topic change.” She brushes her thumb over his chin. “You want to go outside?”

“Nah, just…don’t want to touch them.”

“I’ll save you, then,” she says, and heaves herself up out of the chair. 

Honestly, she probably would have let it go if he hadn’t spent the next week being incredibly careful not to touch her hair. He doesn’t actually succeed—she catches him at it, once or twice, hooking his fingers through it when he’s listening to his text-to-speech reader with her head on his shoulder, or when they’re both half-asleep and he has a few strands curled around his thumb—but he does seem to be trying, and she never really realized how frequently he would mess with her hair until he starts actively telling himself to stop. And at work, it makes sense, because they’re not really supposed to be touchy at work, anyway (office professionalism, she thinks; _office professionalism, my ass_ ). Outside, though, it’s…weird. She keeps expecting a scrape against her scalp and she never gets it. 

_Is this what cats feel like when they want pets and get ignored?_ She’s not sure. She’s also not sure when she started leaving her hair down all the time, but it’s only when she starts putting it up again (as a test, she thinks, because she’s also used to him coming up behind her and pulling pencils out of buns just to mess with it) that she realizes it must have been right around the time that she and Matt started dating. Which, okay, that’s more evidence in her corner. He doesn’t always notice, she doesn’t think, but he’s actively trying, and by the time the week is out, it’s just…she’s done. 

It’s Friday when she realizes she’s messing with it herself. She’s spent the first hour or so of the day at her desk, facing Matt, and she’s braiding and unbraiding her hair like she does when she’s thinking and needing something to do with her hands. This time, though, when she undoes the braid for what must be the dozenth time, she looks up to see Matt’s lips pressed together in a very specific way, and yeah, okay. There’s something here. There’s definitely something here, and he’s not wanting to talk about whatever it is. But the thing is, Darcy’s bored; her eyes are crossing with legal briefs from the seventies (searching for precedent? Occasionally like being encased in _actual hellfire_ ) and he’s trying very hard to prove a point to himself that’s actually irrelevant, and she’s done. She’s really, actually done.

Darcy pushes her hair back up out of her face, watching him through her eyelashes, and thinks, _game on, bucko_.

She doesn’t really have a plan. Generally things go better, at least with stuff like this, when she just wings it. So she goes back to braiding her hair, bigger chunks this time, and twining it all up into a bun. It’s something she’s done for ages, braiding without looking at it, a habit she picked up in middle school when she’d been bored and waiting for other people to finish their classwork, and it’s not something she ever really notices herself doing, but it’s deliberate today. The office door is open, for once, and she can hear Karen talking on the phone in Spanish with someone that Mrs. Cardenas referred to them a few months ago, sticky divorce case with bad blood left and right. Foggy has show tunes playing in his office again. (She’d stolen his _Oklahoma!_ CD ages ago, but unfortunately he’s found a new one; she’s going to have to start breaking them.) When she shifts her hair again, and gets up, Matt lifts his head. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just need to move.” She winds her hair up and sticks a pencil through it, and he presses his lips together again. “You want coffee?”

“Not really.”

She grabs the mug anyway, because it’s empty, and walks off. She steals Karen’s mug, too, and makes a fresh pot (Karen’s on the phone, and can’t argue about it) before washing her hands in the sink, and tugging a strand of hair down to twist around her finger as she waits for the press to settle. She knows for a fact that Matt will be able to tell what she’s doing, if he’s paying attention—which, let’s be honest, she’s fairly certain he is. There’s something oddly entertaining about this, that she’s pushing and he can’t actually do much about it without breaking his own rules, without outing the fact that he fibbed (or, who knows, he may genuinely believe he doesn’t, but either way it’s funny). It’s possible, she considers, that she may need more work to do, if she’s playing with this so much. But still, when she comes back in with more coffee and a curl framing her face, Matt’s expression has gone completely pursed-lipped, snapped-eyebrows suspicious, and it’s actually hilarious.

“Whatever you think you’re doing,” he says, “it’s not going to work.”

“I’m doing something?” Darcy tugs at the strand of hair again, and tucks it behind her ear. “Really? I thought you said that you had no idea what I was talking about, boyo.”

He hisses between his teeth, and she scoots out to give Karen her fresh mug before he can do anything else. 

Karen’s known for keeping hair ties in desk drawers even though a good ninety percent of the time she doesn’t actually use them; Darcy palms a few, and starts adding those into the mix. When Karen asks what’s going on, she just shrugs and says, “I dunno, I’m just itchy today, it’s bugging me,” and Matt comes to the door of their office to give her the most unimpressed eyebrows on the planet. Darcy sticks her tongue out at him while Karen’s not paying attention, and perches on the edge of Karen’s desk to go over schedules. 

She quits over lunch, because she doesn’t exactly want to smear mint sauce in her hair, but then they have a walk-in at about one-thirty, and since Foggy’s out, it’s her, Matt, and Karen piling into the conference room to talk to the guy about the crazy lady two doors down who keeps leaving dead rats on his doorstep. (Also bouquets of flowers like some kind of horrifying Valentine’s Day present, which, what the fuck, she’s pretty sure there needs to be some kind of stalking claim filed with the cops here in addition to whatever suit they can bring up.) She’s sitting on Karen’s far side, and even as she asks questions— _how do you know it was her? Are you certain there was nothing in particular that sparked this? So she asked you out and you said no, how did you say no?_ —she tugs the tie out of her hair again and starts winding a strand around and around her finger, like she’s thinking. Karen doesn’t notice, because Karen wouldn’t notice, really, but she hears Matt clear his throat twice, and knows she has him. _Nothing, hm_ , she thinks, and leans back in her chair to twist it back up into a ponytail. _Because it’s completely nothing that has you twitching like you're stuck to a hot stove_. 

“Pantene’s good,” says Karen, once they’ve waved the guy out the door with a referral to another law firm. “Or Head and Shoulders.”

“Thanks, Kare,” Darcy says, and deliberately does not look at Matt. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

Matt clears his throat again, and stalks off into their shared office. When she goes in to get more coffee, she says under her breath, “This would go easier for you if you admitted it, you know.”

“There’s nothing to admit,” Matt shouts at her through the wall, and Karen jumps so badly that she nearly slops coffee over herself. Darcy sticks her head out of the kitchenette.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She puts a hand to her heart. “Just—forget, sometimes.”

“Stop startling Karen.”

“Shut up, Lewis,” says Matt, and she hides a grin behind her mug. 

She gets mean after that, though. She puts her hair back down, and starts leaning. She’s not entirely sure that he isn’t just going to grab her and pull her down to him in front of Foggy and Karen (and Kate, when she shows up at three) when she puts a hand on his shoulder and leans in close enough that she’s basically propped up there. Matt’s stiff and still in a way that means she could break her hand on his back, if she tried to hit him, and he seems to be trying very hard not to breathe. Once or twice she thinks Foggy might suspect something—he has a look on his face that he reserves for some kind of _god, really, guys?_ question that he doesn’t always have the nerve to ask—but he doesn’t say anything, and neither does Matt, and Darcy just kind of luxuriates in it all. _I’m kind of an asshole_ , she thinks at about four, sitting and talking to Kate and braiding her hair between her fingers again. _Maybe just a little_. 

They close at six, not five. It had been an executive decision, after the whole _Matt Murdock is Daredevil_ thing had come out between the five of them, that starting later (ten instead of nine) and ending later (six instead of five) made things easier for everyone involved. For once, Karen darts off right at six—she’s meeting Ben and Doris somewhere, Darcy thinks, though she can’t quite remember. Kate’s gone by six-thirty, complaining about kanji again (“yes, I speak it, Nelson, that doesn’t mean kanji makes any fucking sense at all—”) and then Foggy’s gathering his things. Matt’s still lurking in the office with all the lights off, like a cave troll. She’s either going to catch hell, or she’s going to get ignored, or get ignored and then catch hell, and either way it’s probably going to be interesting. 

“You sure you don’t want me to stay?” Foggy hooks his bag over his shoulder. “I mean, it’s Hoffman stuff, that’s all of us.”

“Because I need help with Hoffman.” Darcy tucks her hair behind her ear again. “Seriously, Foggy, go, you work later than me most nights anyway.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Here,” Darcy clarifies. “You work later here most nights than I do. Go home, watch TV. Sleep on the couch and then lie to me about it, I don’t know.”

Foggy makes a face at her. “I don’t lie about that.”

“How many times have you slept in a bed this past week?”

“Eight."

She blinks a few times. “It's Friday. "

“There may have been naps.”

“That is a lifestyle I can get behind.” She busses his cheek. “Go, Fog. I’ll text you when we get back tonight, okay?”

His face twists, oddly, but all he says is, “Yeah, okay,” and slips out the front door. Darcy shuts it behind him, and locks it, resting her hand on the frosted glass. 

She’s really expecting it when she turns around to find Matt in the door of their office.

“What,” she says.

“Was there a point?” He’s very quiet as he crosses the floor, stops a few feet away. “To doing all that today.”

“Doing what?” she says, and she’s smiling when he takes another step forward, closer but still out of reach. “I could have sworn there wasn’t anything for me to do.”

She’s halfway through it when Matt closes the distance, and her back hits the wall. It’s the wall, thankfully, not the door, she’s pretty sure Foggy would have turned around if he’d heard the door rattle, but no, it’s the wall, that much she can comprehend before he clenches his hands into her hips and slants his mouth over hers, hard in a way that should sting but mostly just makes her want to laugh. He’s actually growling, odd little spitting sounds crackling out from between his teeth, and when she hooks her nails into the fabric of his jacket and yanks him down into her, he bites. 

“You’re _infuriating_.”

“Uh-huh.” She scratches up into his hair, and when Matt nips hard at her chin, at her jaw, she laughs. “This is totally infuriating to you. What happened to office professionalism?”

He fists a hand in her hair. “Shut up.”

She shuts up.

.

.

.

“So you have absolutely no thing for my hair, at all.”

Matt threads his fingers into it. “I mean, it’s nice hair.”

**Author's Note:**

> The answer to the question "why does Matt like Darcy's hair" is twofold. The first part is he kind of overfocused on it when he was doing the silly "lol I can't POSSIBLY tell her anything" shtick, because Darcy likes people petting her hair, and if Matt touched her hair more often than anyone else did, I mean, he could write it off as platonic. "She asked me to, it's okay." Which is bullshit, and fooled no one, but he fooled himself for a long time anyway.
> 
> The second part is that he's not even really sure, he just likes her hair a lot. Actual human asshole cat. 
> 
> I'm splitting little sidefics like this one off into their own series; The Making of Monsters will be TPoW, the end is unknown, AKA C&D, and TSoD (title's secret until it's posted, shhhhh); the sidefics will be cage, secret code, counterfeit, walking through walls, and this. I'll link everything together somehow, just...I didn't want the TMoM series page cluttered.
> 
> As always, I am shu-of-the-wind on Tumblr and Shu of the Wind on FB. (I post status updates, so...)


End file.
